The Bivings Report - powered by the Bivings Group

Peter Warden has a great post up on his blog that looks at how Facebook users in different states are connected to each.  He finds that the U.S. can be divided into roughly seven regions, which are visualized above.  Be sure to read the full post.

I’m not a big fan of the majority of available widgets, apps, and games that bombard Facebook.  Most are garbage in my opinion, and do nothing other than clutter your profile or page.

The problem is many of these widgets were built with the old school marketing mentality of “if we build it, they will come.’”

The truth is, Facebook widgets fail for the following reasons: 

• They provide zero value, and do nothing but act as bulletin boards for a product or brand.
• There is no level of engagement  that relates to the user.
• They rely on a flashy gimmicky presence to create a viral whirlwind.
• The existing culture and loyalty of the brand was never taken into consideration.

So when I came across The Who’s Facebook game, Name That Riff, I was skeptical. Being a big Who fan, my concern was their game would fall into the above reasons of Facebook widget purgatory. That wouldn’t be the case.

Name That Riff works.

The game provides loyal fans an opportunity to show off their knowledge of The Who.  The design is strong and fits in the visual identity the band has built since the 60’s. Most importantly the game is simple and doesn’t take much time.

• You are given 17 music clips to listen to.
• You must choose from 3 answers and have 30 seconds per clip.
• Like the bar quiz games, the quicker you answer, the more points you rack up.
• You are allowed three chances to improve your score.

This game picks songs from the entire Who archive.  Also songs start at random places to throw you off.  I fancy myself as a knowledgeable Who fan, but I tripped up at some of their selections.  Once done you can publish your score on your profile and in your news feed.  You can also compare your score with your friends on Facebook or globally.

The word of mouth aspect is very clever.

Players are urged to challenge their friends. Doing so opens up bonus rounds that you can play to improve your score. And unlike other apps that rely on you spamming random friends, you’ll want to share it with other Who fans.

The Creative Corporation, who built this game, did their homework, and it shows. They took into account, what fans of The Who love, their music. By providing a simple but entertaining widget that people will want to use and share, they are successful.  It appears that Name That Riff was just released on TheWho.com, so it will be interesting to see how well it does.

Incidentally, if I happen to win the customized American Standard Stratocaster, I’ll let you know!

In response to the devastating aftermath of the twin earthquakes (on January 12 and then on January 20) in Haiti, Crisis Commons has come to serve as a key forum for the coordination of professional volunteers in the development of rapid solutions to the diverse array of information-based challenges facing the aid effort.

Crisis Commons volunteers are drawn from experts in the fields of geospatial mapping, software development, graphic design,  language translation, NGO and government work, and general logistics.

Teams collaborate most intensively and perhaps productively at live meetings called “Crisis Camps”, which have met and will be meeting in cities across North and South America, from New York to Los Angeles, and from Bogota to Ottawa.

Projects resulting from Crisis Camps include a Creole-to-English mobile app, and a platform enabling the sharing of resources between relief organizations called the We Have, We Need Exchange.

Many other projects have been conceived and are in development.  View the full project list here.

In order to learn more about becoming a collaborator on a Crisis Camp Haiti project, click here.

Seth Godin has an insightful blog post up where he very succinctly describes the fundamental difference between spam and permission-based email campaigns. 

A spam campaign feels like a smart idea, but over time, the more you use it, the less your brand is worth. A permission campaign, on the other hand, only grows in value, until it gets big enough that you can build an entire business around it.

Earning permission is a long-term, profitable, scalable strategy that pays for itself. Think about how much better off a brand would be if it took the time to make promises, keep them and be transparent about its communications.

Ultimately your list is only valuable if your subscribers are engaged.  An email list of 10,000 passionate, engaged people who have truly opted in is more valuable than a list of 100,000 addresses acquired through nefarious means.  Those 10,000 folks will buy your product, write letters to Congress and/or donate money.  With spam lists, you’ll be lucky if they even open your email.

Godin’s full post is worth reading.

Back in January 2009 I started the Master of Information Management program at the University of Maryland, and last semester I took a class on Consumer Health Informatics and another one on Social Computing.  With the permission of both professors, I wrote different versions of a paper for each class about how Wikipedia has maintained accurate health information, and a version of this paper is now available here. The Accuracy of Health Information on Wikipedia (click to access the report) was an interesting paper to write, and I hope that you find it just as interesting to read.

Wikipedia is different from other well known websites with health information in that it allows anyone – subject experts and laypeople – to contribute and edit information that it presents. Given that anyone with access to the site can edit it, scholarly studies have found to the surprise of Wikipedia’s critics that scientific information on the site is as nearly as accurate as that found in Encyclopedia Britannica (read the December 2005 Nature article “Internet encyclopaedias go head to head” that helped publicize this debate). This also goes against the reasoning of established measures of health information accuracy like the standards of the HONcode. Instead of having strict editorial procedures involving subject experts, Wikipedia’s culture fosters and regulates a sizable community of ardent editors who are devoted to protecting the information integrity of the site, and scholars speculate that their motivations are not altruistic. Through the diligence of active Wikipedia users and the establishment of standards, procedures, boundaries of responsibilities, and sanctions, the site has articles with accurate information. To discuss Wikipedia’s accuracy, this paper reviews the scholarly literature about Wikipedia’s accuracy in relation to health information. This discussion will focus on the the following topics: Wikipedia’s contribution to consumer health information sites on the Internet, metrics used to measure the quality of health information on the Internet, its level of accuracy, what aspects of its community culture enable it to maintain remarkably high accuracy levels, and the characteristics and aims of other collaborative websites like Wikipedia.

Through a very elegant blend of rental data from Netflix and Google Maps, the New York Times continues to improve on the infographic with a very interesting interactive feature called "A Peek Into Netflix Queues", which it published on January 10.

The Netflix maps drew me in for about 30 minutes, as I clicked from film to film, watching as the density of rentals for each was represented in shades of red within each zipcode in the Metro DC region.  For rental distributions that may confirm some common assumptions, look no further than "Frost/Nixon" and "Paul Blart: Mall Cop".

One commenter on Metafilter went so far as to say that the feature could be used by people (snobs?) as a tool for selecting neighborhoods in which to consider living.  ("Hm, the schools are good and the neighborhood is safe.  But do we really want to stand in line at the grocery store with a bunch of people who sat through ‘Bride Wars’?")

The Times has mapped 12 major metro regions.  Take a look at it here.

The Personal Democracy Forum has made its plans for this year’s technology and politics conference, which will be held in New York City on June 3-4.

This year’s conference will again touch on technological and political trends affecting governance around the world, but will be held at the CUNY Graduate Center.

As in years past, PdF has lined up an renowned list of speakers and panelists for the two-day event. Some of this year’s featured presenters include the Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, Craig Newmark of Craigslist.org and the New York Times’ Nick Bilton.

The Bivings Group is once again thrilled to be a sponsor of the PdF conference. Last year, we set up a Twitterslurp, a tweet-aggregator set up to corral dialog happening during the conference. We’re excited to brainstorm new ways to work with the conference this year.

Here are a few videos from last year’s conference:

TBG’s Todd Zeigler and the Pickens Plan’s Heather Lauer discussion building a social action movement with the Pickens Plan:

Media experts mull hyper-local journalism in politics:

Attendees talk about bridging the digital divide:

Conference-goers can get an early registration price if they buy before Feb. 15. Click here for ticket information.